Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Laptop Teen Crashes Metropolitan Police's Website

A
teenager, who crashed the Metropolitan Police Service's website by
carrying out a cyber attack from his laptop, will be sentenced next
month.

Jobless
Jordan Jones, 19, of Windermere Avenue, Billingham, Cleveland slowed
down the site over two days, eventually bring it grinding to a halt
and inaccessible to the public.

His
actions betweenAugust 12 and 14 last year resulted in a Denial of
Service (DoS).

DoS
attacks involve myriad requests sent to a single computer hosting a
website, so that it is overloaded and effectively removed from the
web.

Detectives
from the Met's Cyber Crime Unit launched an investigation and,
working with Cleveland Police, identified Jones as the culprit.

On
March 18 police arrested Jones at his home address, from which they
also seized an encrypted laptop computer.

He
pleaded guilty at Teeside Magistrates' Court to four unauthorised
acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, the
operation of a computer, under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, on 13
August 2014.

He
is due to be sentenced at the same court on October 1.

Detective
Inspector Sanjiv Gohil of the Met's Cyber Crime Unit, said: “Most
denial of service attacks are aimed at businesses and the downtime to
their websites can and often does cause a huge dip in their revenue.

In
this case, the loss was to the public. Every day, thousands of people
turn to the Met's website for advice about crime and to report
offences.

“Being
unable to do this and access the advice they are looking for there
and then can make a huge difference to how crime impacts those
people.

"I
would like to reassure the public that there is no evidence of a
compromise to anyone’s personal details as a result of this
attack.”